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Barbara J. Parker

Oakland City Attorney

Barbara J. Parker is the elected City Attorney of Oakland, CA. She is the recipient of the 2015 Public Lawyer of the Year award from the State Bar of California.

In July 2011, the Oakland City Council appointed Parker to complete the term of the prior City Attorney, and in November 2012, Oakland voters overwhelmingly elected her to serve her first full four-year term.

Voters elected Parker to a second four-year term in November 2016. She ran unopposed.

Parker is the first and only African American woman elected to citywide office in Oakland.

Background:

Parker is a native of Seattle, Washington, where her parents migrated during the Great Migration to escape the brutalities of legalized oppression and sharecropping in the rural, segregated South. Family experiences during segregation, her parents’ fierce commitment to education and their struggles as union workers ignited Parker’s determination to strive for equal opportunity and equal rights for all.

Parker and her siblings are the first generation in her family’s history to go to college.

Parker earned an undergraduate degree in Economics from the University of Washington, and she was one of the very few African Americans and women accepted at Harvard Law School in the early 1970s. She graduated from Harvard in 1975 determined to use the law as a tool to help underrepresented communities.

In an award‐winning legal career spanning more than four decades, Parker has developed extensive expertise as an attorney at all levels of government – federal, state and local – including more than 10 years as Chief Assistant of the Oakland City Attorney’s Office and more than five years as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Northern District of California. As an Assistant US Attorney, she represented the United States in federal court litigation involving complex matters, including but not limited to medical malpractice, civil rights, employment and breach of contract.

Parker also has worked in the private sector for several major law firms and corporations, including the law firm of Pillsbury Madison & Sutro (now Pillsbury Winthrop), Brobeck Phleger & Harrison, Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Corporation and Kaiser Hospitals.

In 2005, the State Bar Board of Governors selected Parker for a 3-year appointment to the prestigious State Judicial Council. The constitutional agency chaired by the Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court oversees the California courts and is responsible for ensuring the consistent, independent, impartial and accessible administration of justice.

Parker joined the City Attorney’s Office in mid-1991 as a line attorney, was promoted to head the Labor and Employment Unit in the Advisory Division, where she handled complex advisory and litigation matters for the City of Oakland. In 2000, Parker was promoted to serve as Chief Assistant City Attorney (second-in-command), a post she held for more than ten years.

As Oakland’s City Attorney, Parker has worked to improve public safety, to secure equal opportunity and justice for all Oaklanders, and to ensure that City Hall operates in a transparent, honest and fair manner.

Work and initiatives as City Attorney:

Parker has worked to keep Oakland in the strongest possible legal standing, thereby saving millions of dollars for essential services like public safety, libraries and infrastructure.

She has been a strong advocate for transparency and good government at City Hall; she sponsored and co-authored a comprehensive government ethics law adopted by the City Council in 2015.

She shut down two Oakland hotels that were centers for prostitution and the sexual exploitation of minors; in 2015 she filed lawsuits against two other motels that have been epicenters of crime and violence in East Oakland.

Also in 2015, Parker filed a federal lawsuit against Wells Fargo to recover damages caused by the bank's predatory and discriminatory mortgage lending practices against African American and Latino borrowers.

In 2016, Parker co-sponsored a gun safety ordinance to reduce theft of firearms from vehicles. The law makes it a crime to leave firearms, magazines or ammunition unsecured in unattended vehicles on city streets and in other public places.

Also in 2016, Parker secured a victory in bankruptcy court that allowed the sale and rehabilitation of the Empyrean Towers apartment building in downtown Oakland. The Court’s order is a landmark decision because it is not based simply on compensating creditors; the ruling recognizes the principle of “social responsibility” in bankruptcy law, guaranteeing that the building will be maintained as affordable housing for at least 55 years.

In September 2017, Parker and San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera filed lawsuits against the five largest investor-owned producers of fossil fuels in the world. The lawsuits ask the courts to hold these companies responsible for the costs of sea walls and other infrastructure necessary to protect Oakland and San Francisco from ongoing and future consequences of climate change and sea level rise caused by the companies’ production of massive amounts of fossil fuels.

The California State Bar, which licenses California attorneys and oversees the practice of law in California, recognized Parker as California’s 2015 Public Lawyer of the Year for her work on behalf of the community and her dedication to public service. The award recognizes exceptional attorneys who have dedicated a significant portion of their careers to public service and is named in honor of former California Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald George.

In addition, Parker has received the the Ella Hill Hutch Statewide Award from Black Women Organized for Political Action (2013), the Distinguished Public Service Award from the International Municipal Lawyers Association (2013) and the Susan B. Anthony Woman of the Year Award from the National Women’s Political Caucus Alameda North Chapter (2013). In 2012, the California Diversity Counsel named Parker one of the “Most Powerful and Influential Women of California.”

More information:

Parker served as Board President of the Black Adoption Placement and Research Center, which for more than 30 years found permanent homes for children, the majority of whom were in California’s foster care system. She is co‐President of Sankofa Holistic Healing Institute, which supports holistic health and healing for cancer and depression patients. She is a member of the Charles Houston and Alameda County Bar Associations, the Berkeley‐Bay Area Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., the League of Women Voters, the National Women’s Political Caucus, Black Women Organized for Political Action and the Black Women Lawyers Association. She also served as a mentor for the East Bay College Fund which mentors college students who are the first in their families to attend college.

Parker is the proud parent of daughter Savannah Parker, a 2012 graduate of Spelman College, and the proud grandparent of Samuel Koda Clement, born in 2011. Parker resides in Oakland’s Haddon Hill neighborhood near Lake Merritt. She has lived in Oakland for more than 30 years.